CALIFORNIANS WANT RELIEF FROM GAS PRICES, NOT TAX HIKES

Californians today are struggling to afford the skyrocketing price of gasoline. If you have filled up your gas tank recently, I don’t have to tell you how outrageous the prices have been.

A recent report from the Automobile Club of Southern California found that drivers in the Riverside-San Bernardino area were paying approximately $4.25 per gallon on average for regular unleaded gas. Between January and February, gas prices in our region jumped 58 cents per gallon, which the Automobile Club says is the biggest one-month increase ever. Statewide, Californians are paying the second-highest gas prices in the nation, right behind Hawaii.

Motorists in our area are hit especially hard because many drive an hour or more each day as they commute to work or school. Every day they are shelling out more and more money for gasoline. This is money that they don’t have to buy clothes and school supplies for their kids, fix up their home or take the next family vacation. Californians are looking to their elected officials for some relief at the pump.

Unfortunately, the trend in Sacramento is to make gasoline prices even more expensive. A recent action by the State Board of Equalization will result in Californians paying more the next time they fill up. On a party-line vote, Sacramento liberals on the board voted to increase the excise tax on gasoline by a whopping 3.5 cents per gallon, starting July 1.

Keep in mind that a significant portion of what you pay for gasoline comes from taxes. The federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon. In addition, Californians pay both a state sales tax and a state excise tax on every gallon. Altogether, Californians pay the second-highest gas taxes for regular unleaded fuel in the nation — 67.1 cents per gallon. This is just behind what New York drivers pay at 69 cents per gallon. If you drive a car that uses diesel fuel, the taxes you pay are even higher, at 75.3 cents per gallon.

The liberals who pushed this latest gas tax increase said they had no choice but to approve an increase based on a scheme enacted into law a few years ago.

Previously, gas tax dollars were spent on priorities other than transportation. Then voters enacted Proposition 42 in 2002 to lock in state sales tax money for local road and transit needs.

Sales taxes could no longer be used to pay off transportation debt, but had to go for real projects. However, the excise tax could be used to pay for debt costs.

The Legislature passed a scheme in 2010 to get around this restriction. Lawmakers enacted a “fuel tax swap” — lowering the state sales tax and increasing the state excise tax so they could make more money available to pay off transportation debt. Later that same year, voters rejected this move with the passage of Proposition 22 and 26.

Not to be foiled, lawmakers enacted another fuel tax scheme.

Now, the Board of Equalization is required to forecast state tax revenues that would have been collected if the prior tax structure were still in place. To ensure that the same amount of money is collected, they are supposed to adjust the excise tax each year to reach that amount. But the board’s action is really just a guess on their part. It has been argued that they really were only required to enact a 1-cent gas tax increase, not the 3.5 cent increase they ultimately passed.